THE MASSACRES OF SEPTEMBER.
The wretched Queen’s head and eyelids drooped for a moment as she
heard the words which dethroned her husband; then, once again, her
head was high and defiant. Together with the misfortune of the
Austrian Hapsburg, she inherited their pride and courage. From that
hour to the moment of her death, her courage never failed her. She
appears to have equally forgiven and despised.
Events now followed with terrible rapidity. The Prussians entered
France and the town of Verdun fell into their power. That humiliation
brought about the massacres of September. The town council purposed
their capitulation. Then Colonel Beaupaire, the commandant, opposed
it; and refusing to sign the capitulation, he blew out his brains
at the council. His body was removed, the capitulation signed, the
Prussians marched in, and the daughters of the principal inhabitants,
strewed flowers before the foreign troops.
All of those girls—to be excused, by reason of their youth—were,
during the Reign of Terror, sent to the guillotine.
Beaupaire’s body was carried away by his men, who marched out of
Verdun with all the honors of war, and to it was accorded a state
funeral, while the heart was placed in the Pantheon.
Every day, Danton was rising into power.
Every day, Robespierre was following him, and marking him down with
the vigor of a sleuth hound.
It was he who organised the September massacres. On the 28th of
August, a grave-digger, who knew the plan of certain catacombs, was
awakened at six in the morning by a Government agent, and told to
prepare this place, within ten days, for receiving a large number of
bodies. He was ordered to be silent, on pain of death.
On this same day, organised bands of fierce-looking men, springing
no one knew whence, patrolled the streets. The gates of Paris were
closed, so that no one could escape, though thousands had fled
between the day of the King’s first fall and this one, the 28th of
August.
Every house was visited. Five thousand persons, suspected of leaning
towards royalty, were seized during the following night. Every
court-house, convent, prison, was overflowing with prisoners.
Robespierre still remained quiet and watchful—still lived in hiding
in the house of good Duplay, the joiner.
On that night, Robespierre went to the apartments of St. Just, in the
Rue St. Anne, and found him calmly going to bed.
“Why not?” asked St. Just. “Murder will be done to-night, but I
cannot prevent it. And again, those who will die are our enemies.
Good night.”
He fell asleep. Awaking, hours after, he marked Robespierre, pale,
haggard.
“Have you returned?”
“_Returned!_”
“What! have you not slept?”
“Slept!” cried Robespierre; “when the blood of thousands is being
shed by hundreds of assassins—when pure or impure blood runs down the
streets like water! Oh, no,” he continued, with a sardonic smile; “I
have not slept—I have watched, like remorse or crime; I have had the
weakness not to close my eyes. But _Danton—he has slept_!”
On Sunday (of all days in the week), it being the 2nd of September,
at three in the afternoon, the signal for the massacre was given,
by one of those strange accidents with which we are all acquainted.
Five coaches, filled with prisoners, were passing. These prisoners
happened, by chance, to be all priests.
“See the friends of the Prussians!” cried one in the crowd. It was
enough. The rage of knowing that the Prussians had conquered Verdun
made them mad in a moment.
From that hour until four days were passed, murder was unceasing all
over Paris. It was enough to look like a Royalist, and death followed.
Half the priests were killed in the carriages, before they reached
the prison gates.
Inside those gates, as inside the gates of all the other ordinary or
improvised prisons, sat the revolutionary tribunes, twelve fierce
men, who decided rapidly the fate of the prisoner, while they drank
and smoked.
They were chiefly in shirt-sleeves. However, here and there might be
seen white-handed men, who evidently were the master spirits of those
terrible juries, which, in their way, were merciful, for they did
not condemn a prisoner to death. If acquitted, the decree was “Set
this gentleman at liberty;” if guilty, “To the Force,”—a decree which
was a pun, for there was a prison called La Force, while the word
“force” may be said to be “death;” therefore, “à la force” conveyed
to the prisoner the idea that he was to be conveyed to the prison of
La Force. In this belief, when approaching the prison gate, he had no
idea death was at hand. The gate opened, and he was delivered to the
force of an organised band, who quickly despatched him. Each band of
executioners was controlled by a hidden chief. They moved from prison
to prison as the revolutionary juries sat, and they did their work
with the steadiness of actual business.
The prison massacres began with the Swiss, at the Abbaye. They knew
what was coming. They were one hundred and fifty. A young officer
led the way. He was very young and beautiful, and the murderers
fell back. He folded his arms. The bayonets came nearer. He rushed
forward, grasped five or six of the bayonets in his arms, and fell
upon their points.
They all died—their commander, one Major Redding being the last. He
said he would see his men out. There were not enough wagons to carry
the bodies to the catacombs, so they were heaped up until the return
of the tumbrils.
Benches were set for women to see these massacres, and they and their
children danced round the dead bodies.
At the “Abbey” prison the prisoners were shot down in the chapel, and
while two priests, eighty and white-haired, were preparing them for
death.
Some anticipated execution by suicide.
One Sombreuil, a prisoner, was condemned to death, and he was loosed
to the mob. Bayonets were at his breast, when his daughter, who was
waiting in the midst of the murderers, flung herself before him and
asked for his life.
The crowd accorded it upon one condition—that she should drink a
glass of blood, then flowing from one of the dying.
This she did, and saved him.
Another father and daughter, the Cazottes, left the prison
together—he condemned, she free. But the daughter cried that she
would die with him. So they spared both lives. So far, the national
madness had not destroyed pity for women.
The King’s first gentleman, one Thierri, being pierced by a pike,
cried, “God save the King!” and died, waving his hat as he was
transfixed to the woodwork to which he clung.
A deputy of the National Assembly came to one of the prisons, to
claim two prisoners; whom obtaining, as he passed from the prison,
the murderers, eating as they sat on the bodies of their victims,
asked him, “Are you tired of life?”
“No.”
“Then see the heart of an aristocrat!”
The speaker tore the heart from the gaping breast of the dead man
upon which he was coolly seated.
Yet these murderers refused all recompense. The first bands were men
of comparative education; but, not being bred butchers, they soon
sickened at the task, and left it to be continued by men of more iron
nerves than theirs.
Blood had by this time, drenched nine prisons. From one alone, the
tumbrils had removed one hundred and ninety bodies.
Sixty assassins; this was the number to be seen at each prison door,
waiting for the blood of the aristocrats.
Meanwhile, one hundred and sixty heads fell upon the scaffold, some
being those of women. The poor Princess de Lamballe, the Queen’s
devoted friend, was not one of those saved. She had followed the
royal family to the Temple prison, but she was torn from them after
a few days. She was a very young widow, passionately loved by her
father-in-law, who lived far away in the country. He forwarded
12,000_l._ to save her life, if possible. It was her want of
courage, or, perhaps, ability to dissemble, which cost this poor
lady her life. On September 3rd, she appeared before the tribunal.
She had passed two days continually fainting; and when ordered,
with feigned brutality, by two National Guards to follow them, she
asked permission to die where she was. One of them leant down, and
whispered, “It is to save you.”
Upon coming before the tribunal, the sight of the blood all about
deprived her of consciousness. It was long before she comprehended
what was required of her.
“Swear the love of liberty and equality, and hatred of kings!”
“I swear the first,” she said, “but not the second. It is not in my
heart.”
One of the judges whispered to her—“Swear everything, or you are
lost.”
She remained silent.
“Well—when you go out, cry ‘Long live the nation!’”
She nodded; but upon being led out by two men, one of them a leader
in the massacres—one Grand Nicholas,—upon sight of the dead bodies,
she cried, “Good God! how horrible!”
Nicholas put his hand over her mouth. They had traversed half the
street in safety, when a drunken barber, trying to strike off her cap
with his knife, wounded her in the forehead. The men about believed
her condemned, and in a few moments she was dead, her head cut off,
and set amongst the glasses on the counter of a wine-shop, where they
drank to her death. The barber then set the head upon a pole, and
carried it in procession to the Temple. There the crowd forced an
entrance, and insisted upon shewing the head to the ex-Queen.
The King was called upon to show himself to the people; and though
an unknown friend endeavored to prevent Louis from seeing the head,
the kind intention was foiled, and the King recognised the features.
Marie Antoinette was now demanded, and she presented herself to the
people; but the King, active for once, saved his wife from the sight
of poor Lamballe’s head. She only learnt what had happened in the
evening.
Three days’ murders! At two other prisons, five hundred and
seventy-five victims awaited burial. At the end of the three days,
the murder of women was common. A beautiful girl, one of the people,
having wounded her lover from jealousy, and he being a national
soldier, she was burnt alive, under circumstances of peculiar
atrocity, suggested by the wretched woman, “La Belle Heleise,” whose
advancing madness was her excuse. Her own time, when she was to be
lashed by her own sex, was fast approaching.
A negro—a huge giant—was especially famous during these three days.
He, it is said, killed over two hundred. He gave himself no rest;
stopped only to drink wine, and, naked to the waist, was a fearful
sight, seen, as he habitually was, with the fair head of a slain
woman swinging in his left hand. At last, he himself was slain, but
not for two years, during which, where blood flowed, he was ever to
be seen. At the end, he said he had revenged himself, not upon the
enemies of France, but upon the enemies of his race—_the whites_.
It is said ten thousand fell in those three days and nights.
The murderers began at last to turn upon one another. Especially was
this the case with the bands who adopted death by burning.
A weaver—one Laurent—drew up a list of those it was intended to kill,
and placed upon it the name of a tradesman, who refused to give him
credit. The tradesman, having a friend in a member of the National
Assembly, threw himself upon his protection. The name was erased, and
Laurent’s written above it; and when Laurent pointed to the tradesman
at the place of execution, he was himself seized, and cast into the
flames.
Meanwhile, the Prussians on the frontier were preparing to advance.
This threat of invasion gave the public sentiment an impetus towards
panic, which there was no resisting.
The National Assembly, which was composed, for the greater part, of
men of ripe age, was practically abolished by the constitution of a
“Convocation,” in which the majority of the men of power were under
thirty, while amongst them, several were scarcely more than of age.
The King, once in prison, it has been seen how the fact was followed
by the fearful massacres of September 2nd, 3rd, and 4th. Scarcely
were they complete, than the men in power began to protest against
their enormity, and it was endeavored to be shown, with some
success, that these wholesale murders were perpetrated by a fierce
organization of but comparatively few men, who cast this great shame
upon France.
Certainly, the same men were at the doors of the various prisons,
while the rough order established amongst them, far more clearly
pointed to the operation of a secret society, than to the sudden
unorganized rage of a maddened people.
The Convention was really divided into Girondists and Jacobins—the
former led by Roland and Vergniaud, their party being distinguished
by moderation; the latter, led by Robespierre (now rapidly becoming
the leading man in the Revolution), Danton, and the miserable savage,
Marat, who even condescended to attract the approbation of the lowest
rabble, by wearing rags, as clothes, offensive from very want of
cleanliness—a shape of vanity fortunately rarely to be found.
The life or death of the King was really the question of the
Convention; it was the test of Royalty or Republicanism, and no man
knew this better than Robespierre. It was by the exercise of this
knowledge that he rose to power—to that power, by the exercise of
which almost all the men who had formed a portion of the National
Assembly, who were members of the Convention which superseded the
Assembly, were sent to the scaffold before he himself mounted the
fatal ladder.
It was evident how things lay when the question of lodging the
President of the Convention was mooted. It being proposed that he
should lodge in the Tuileries, then called the National Palace,
Tallien cried, “Why, out of this chamber, your President is but a
plain citizen; therefore, if he is wanted, let him be sought for in
the garrets where, in general, only truth and virtue are to be found.”
Danton and Robespierre were now mortal, although concealed, enemies.
They knew that one must destroy the other—which?
The theory of a republic was now declared; it was the first step to
the beheading of the King, to whom I will now return.
The Temple, to which the royal family had been taken, was an old
building, half monastery, half castle, which had once been one of the
strong-holds of those monk-soldiers, the Knights Templars. It was
composed of a couple of towers, one seventy feet high, the other much
smaller, and a large space of ground, surrounded by a comparatively
low wall. This enclosure contained many houses, and especially a
very fine building, once the palace of the Templars themselves. Many
of the windows of the surrounding houses, which formed part of the
lowest quarter of Paris, overlooked these grounds, in which there was
an avenue of chestnut trees, and a pretty garden.
The towers had not been used for almost hundreds of years, and
the contents of their several floors were of the most wretched
description. The rooms themselves, built round a central staircase,
were desolate in the extreme; while the walls being nine feet deep,
the windows loopholes, and even these barred, it need not be said
that the interior was never wholesomely light.
The royal prisoners were taken to the old palatial building upon
their arrival, and the poor King at once expressed a sense of relief
at the serenity his wife and children now enjoyed, compared with the
dangers they ran at the royal palace.
The family supped together, and the King, as usual, ate heartily. The
municipals told off to watch the prisoners, stood during the meal,
but this slight semblance of respect was soon to disappear.
Louis chatted cheerfully as to what their life should be—how he
would be his son’s school-master—how the garden was large enough for
exercise—how they should live, and employ the day. He even inspected
the rooms, the beds, the linen; in a word, was once more the man he
had always been—a rather quiet spirited, inquisitive, active, dull
man.
But this respite lasted only during a few hours. The King had
appointed the various bed-rooms, but before the Dauphin could be
put to bed in the one set down as his, an order came from the
authorities, ordering that the royal family should be lodged in the
smaller tower.
They waited until after midnight before their new place of
imprisonment was ready, and then themselves carried what was wanting
to the tower. The King’s servant asking where his master was to be
lodged, the municipal officer replied, “Your master has been living
under gilded roofs; he will find none here, and learn at the same
time how we lodge the murderers of the people.”
Madame Elizabeth was lodged in the kitchen, on the ground floor; the
so-called Court on the second; the King, Queen, and children, on the
floors above. The walls and the floors were bare, except for some
obscene pictures on the walls, which the King took down, turning them
to the wall.
The King went to bed, and fell asleep. Not so the Queen, who remained
awake the whole night.
The next day, adapting himself to even these fallen circumstances,
the King ordered the day’s plans; and pushing about the room, came
upon a small collection of books, chiefly Latin—a discovery which
once more brought a smile of pleasure to his face.
Ten days afterwards, 20th August, and when the royal family had
retired for the night, the noise of many advancing feet awakened
them. The authorities of the prison came armed with orders from
Parliament, to deprive the royal family of every attendant who had
hitherto followed their fortunes. The agony the Queen experienced
upon parting with the Princess de Lamballe was intense.
“From this night,” cried Marie Antoinette, “I do date my captivity.”
Within a fortnight, as I have related, the poor Princess de
Lamballe’s head was raised on a pike to the window of the Queen’s
prison. One Tison’s wife was appointed to look after the Queen; while
Simon, afterwards celebrated for his cruelty to the Dauphin, and
Rocher, a mere brute, were the gaolers-in-chief.
It was Rocher who never passed by the Queen without blowing clouds of
tobacco-smoke in her Majesty’s face.
The walls of the Temple were ablaze with comments upon the royal
family. Here might be read an attack upon Louis’s stoutness, there a
savage comment upon the Queen. Even the children were not spared. For
instance, this sentence was scrawled upon the walls: “What are King’s
children? Whelps who ought to be strangled before they are old enough
to devour the people.”
The unfortunate captives at last dreaded to take the air; the guard
saluted whenever a municipal passed by, but they reversed arms as the
King went by.
At last, they limited the number of steps the royal family might take
when exercising.
The upper windows of the house overlooking the prison were now
the only consolation left to the unhappy royal captives. But that
comprehensive freemasonry of misery with which we are all somewhat
acquainted, the friends of the fallen family, who were still at
liberty, took the upper rooms, from which they could see their King
and his family. The captives soon learnt, by almost indescribable
signs, the windows which were friendly to them. This one would show a
white flower; from another, a hand would be waved; and now and again
a placard would be raised for a moment.
On the 24th of September, the King, having fallen asleep after
dinner, was aroused by a great tumult in the street, below his window.
It was the people declaring the abolition of royalty, and the
declaration of a republic.
“My kingdom,” he said to the Queen, “has passed away like a dream,
and it has not been a happy dream. God gave it me, and the people
take it away. I pray that France may be happy.”
On the evening of the same day, one of his gaolers asked the King
brutally, if he knew that he was living in a republic.
“I have heard it,” he replied; “and I have prayed that the republic
may deal justly with my country. I have never placed myself between
the people and their happiness.”
So far, the King had been allowed to wear his sword and his heraldic
orders.
“You must know,” said his gaoler, “that the republic has suppressed
these baubles; so take them off. You are now but a citizen, as we
are, and must be as we are; yet, what you want, ask the republic for,
and you shall not be denied.”
“I thank you,” said the King calmly. “I want for nothing.”
Very calmly, he continued his interrupted reading.
Amongst the books he read at this time were “The Life and death
of Charles I, of England,” and the “Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire.”
The Convention, however, had not behaved illiberally to the captives.
The members assigned twenty thousand pounds to their use; but very
little was really expended in the direction it was intended to go.
The royal family were wretchedly off for clothes. They had borrowed
here and there; and the Queen herself employed many hours daily in
mending and patching the clothes of the family, which had been much
torn during the day which ended in the imprisonment of Louis and his
family in the Temple.
The English ambassador, in fact, was the chief donor of the clothes
which enabled the royal family to be the possessors of a mere change
of linen.
It is said that the wretched gaolers vied with each other in making
the fallen captives shed tears. That man who succeeded was envied by
his comrades. Well has it been said that the success of a revolution
which was the result of generations of misgovernment, had fallen
heavily upon those royal personages who had least helped to produce
the national hate of royalty, while that victory had of itself driven
the vanquishing people into madness.
But the last degradations had not been put upon the Bourbons. Soon
there came an order from the Convention, to the effect that the King
was to be utterly separated from his family.
They were now to be debarred that last consolation of the
unfortunate—to suffer together.
The despair which ensued even moved the wretch, Rocher. But the order
was imperative, and that night the King was removed from the small
tower, and was imprisoned in the larger. He was now quite alone.
This occurred before the termination of September; and, as though
to make the desolation still more complete, the whole family were
utterly deprived of the means of writing, even to each other. Not a
scrap of paper was allowed—not a pencil—not even a fragment of chalk.
The great tower was being repaired. All the accommodation offered
to Louis was a bed and a chair, set in heaps of brick and plaster
rubbish, which overspread the floor.
Poor man! nature compelled him to be active; and, therefore, being
deprived of reading and writing materials, he passed this first
excruciating night of his acutest misery in counting the steps of the
sentinel as he passed up and down in the corridor outside the King’s
cell.
This night, the King, for the first time, shed tears. His only
companion was a valet, named Cléry, who had been appointed by the
municipal authorities when the King’s servants were removed. He was a
Revolutionist; but his heart was in the right place.
The one fragment of hope to which the king clung on this wretched
night was the suggestion made by this valet, that as he had, since
his appointment, dressed daily the hair of the ladies of the family,
that he should be able to carry messages between them and the King.
Daylight dispelled this hope. It was intimated that Cléry was not
to leave the tower—that the isolation of the King from all exterior
communication must be complete.
When the man made application to this effect, the answer he
scoffingly received was, “Your master will never see even his
children again.”
“’Tis an outrage upon nature!” urged the King, when he was visited by
the authorities. “You murder five hearts in one—you do that, indeed,
which is worse than murder!”
The authorities turned their backs upon the King, not deigning to
answer him.
All that was brought him as food on that first morning of the
separation from his family, was a piece of bread, and a pot of water,
into which a lemon had been squeezed.
“They have forgotten we are two,” said the King, advancing to Cléry,
and breaking the bit of bread in half; “but I do not forget. Take
this; the remainder is enough for me.”
The servant refused, but the King insisted; and so the valet took
it, and wept as he ate. The King also wept. What a picture to
contemplate!—a king and a valet eating a fragment of bread between
them, and tears falling upon the wretched meal!
The King again asked for news of his family, and a reply not
forthcoming, he entreated that he might have some books given him to
drive away the hours.
The Queen had passed the night in a series of fainting-fits; but,
even at that pass, that far higher spirit than the King’s, which
had begotten her so much of the popular hate, still supported her.
The King, though weeping, could eat half the morsel of bread—she
resolutely refused to touch food.
This determination startled the municipals. They were answerable to
the Convention for the prisoners. What if the Queen should starve
herself to death?
“Well, they shall dine together to-day,” said a municipal officer;
“and to-morrow the Commune must decide.”
The Queen, holding her children in her arms, flung herself upon her
knees, and began rapidly praying—so also did Elizabeth.
“I believe,” said the brutal Simon, “that these confounded women are
even making _me_ weep! Bah!” he added, turning to the Queen; “you did
not let tears fall when you caused the people to be assassinated, on
the 10th of August!”
“I never harmed a human being,” said the Queen.
The Commune decreed that the family should take their meals together.
The members knew somewhat of Marie Antoinette’s determination, and
they found that, if separated from her husband, she really would die
from inanition, it has to be recorded that the reunion of the King
and Queen, during the last four months of their lives, was due, not
to the pity, but the fear, of their gaolers.
But they only met at meals, and then they were compelled to speak
French only, and in a loud voice. The children were never again
allowed play about their father. This family was killed by inches.
Their hearts were dead before the knife of the guillotine mercifully
released them.
Cléry took pity upon them, and, at the risk of his own liberty and
life, forwarded, by his wife, who was allowed to come and see him
once a week, a line of farewell to this or that friend, from the King
and Queen. These adieux, some of which still exist, are written with
the stump of a pencil, upon the margins of printed pages, and which
were torn from books.
The King’s cell was, in a few days, set in something like order; but,
with a refinement of cruelty beyond description, the walls were hung
with a paper representing the interior life of prisons.
Now quite desolate, this is how the King spent his time. He rose at
daybreak, and, kneeling, prayed for a long time. Then, the light
quickening, he went to the window, and read the psalms for the day.
After this, the King read what books he could obtain—he read many
scores during his captivity—and this reading appeared entirely to
occupy his mind. At nine, the family met, when he kissed them all on
the forehead. After breakfast, he taught his son in various branches
of knowledge. The Dauphin, precocious in misery, had by this time
tested the dispositions of most of the sentinels; and when one he
knew to be less brutal than the majority mounted guard, the poor
child ran with the news to his mother, and he was happy for the day.
At two, the family again met, and dined. But the King dared not give
way to the fine appetite which never deserted him at any period of
his life, for he knew not only that the quantity of food he ate
was recorded, and the amount spread over Paris, but that the Queen
herself was exceedingly desirous that this weak point in the King’s
prison-life should not give cause to enable it to be said that the
King’s appetite in prison was so great that necessarily he must be
hardened and callous to a degree.
After dinner, the King and Queen were allowed to remain for a brief
time together—nay, they were allowed a pack of cards and a set of
chessmen; but they were forbidden to speak in a low tone to each
other, and a sentinel always kept the unhappy couple within view.
At four, the King generally fell asleep, when the family remained
religiously silent.
At six, the lessons were re-commenced with the Dauphin, and these
went on until supper-time, when the Queen herself undressed the
Dauphin, who said, in a low tone, the following prayer: “Almighty
God, who has created and redeemed me, I love you. Watch the days of
my father and my family, and save us from our enemies, and give my
mamma, and my aunt, and sister strength to bear all their trouble.”
The Dauphin put to bed, the Queen read aloud to the King, her
daughter, and Madame Elizabeth.
At nine, the king was conducted back to his prison, where he read
until midnight, when he went to bed, and slept until daybreak. He,
however, did not retire until he had learnt who was master of the
guard for the following day. If the name was one associated with
kindness, the King’s heart was light, and he fell asleep with utter
serenity.
The prison was very damp, and, after a time, the King fell ill.
Cléry watched him, and himself fell ill as Louis became convalescent.
This valet, long after all was over, recounted some beautiful
particulars of this illness.
The Dauphin would nurse him, and passed day after day in the man’s
sick-room; while the King himself would often come in the night,
bare-footed, and merely in his night-dress, to see how the valet was
progressing, or to give him medicine.
It being ordered that more bolts should be placed upon the doors of
the tower in which the King was imprisoned, the mason employed to
sink the holes in the stone-work into which the bolts were to run,
going to a meal, and leaving his work tools upon the ground, the King
took up a chisel, and began laboring at the means taken to strengthen
his prison. The mason recognised the King at this labor.
“Ah,” said he “when you leave this place, you will be able to say you
worked at your own prison.”
“And how shall I leave it?” asked the King, who suddenly drew his son
towards him, and retired to his cell, where he paced up and down a
long while.
The watch was intense. Every loaf of bread sent to the royal table
was searched and broken, the fruit—the very kernel of a peach, upon
one occasion split to find a letter.
A deputation arriving, asked the King whether he lacked anything.
“Yes,” he said; “my wife and family want clothes—you see we are in
rags.”
Meanwhile, the King’s cousin, the Duke of Orleans, who had become a
Republican under the name of Citizen Philip Equality, uttered no word
in favor of his royal cousin languishing in the Temple.
Another misfortune now fell upon the King. It will be remembered
how fond the King was of lock-making. His master in the art, one
Gamain, had loved the King dearly, but he turned upon the fallen
monarch. It appears that prior to quitting the Tuileries, the King,
being desirous of hiding certain treasures, and especially certain
papers received from abroad, relative to the schemes in progress for
helping the King by the invasion of France, he had worked with this
blacksmith at the formation of a hiding-place in the walls of the
palace for the iron box, which contained these papers and valuables.
After the arrest of the King, Gamain fell ill of a slow consuming
illness, probably low fever, when gradually he convinced himself
that a certain glass of water the King had himself handed the
locksmith, while they were both putting the finishing strokes to
the hiding-place, was poisoned, and that the King’s motive was a
conviction that the secret of these State papers could only be safe
through his, the blacksmith’s, death. This man must surely have been
overpowered by delirium when such a conviction took possession of
him. His illness continuing, the thought of revenge took possession
of him; and finally, he denounced the whole affair to the Convention.
This act did more to send the King to the scaffold than any other
process executed against Louis XVI. In the first place, the theory
of the poison was at once accepted, and it appeared necessarily
very feasible to a multitude ignorant of the question of poisons;
and, in the second, no proof could be brought against Louis of
conspiring with a foreign Power to invade France; an act which was
treason—therefore one which, proved, called for the penalty of death.
Gamain led the way to the spot where lay concealed the hidden
treasure, and upon papers found in that box Louis XVI was put upon
his trial.
The King became accustomed to captivity—found it almost rest—rest
which was disturbed only on December 11 (1792), when the noise of
an approaching procession drew the attention of the royal family to
their windows.
The King learnt that he was to be put upon his trial. Two hours
afterwards, he was on his way to the Convention.
To him, the city appeared as though besieged. Every soldier around
the royal carriage had had served out to him sixteen cartridges.
The King looked wretched. His razors had been taken from him, and his
hair was rough and scrubby about his face. He had grown thin, and his
clothes hung miserably about him. But he was quite unmoved.
He took his seat quietly before the Convention.
“Citizens,” cried the President, “Louis Capet is at the bar. You are
about to give a lesson to kings.”
The accusation was then read. It accused him of high treason in
calling upon the foreigner to enter France.
He listened quite unmovedly until he was accused of “shedding the
blood of the people.” He raised his eyes to heaven. It was clear he
had not anticipated being called a sanguinary prince.
At the close of the first day’s examination, the King’s fatal
appetite failed him, and he refused an offer to obtain refreshments;
but almost immediately afterwards, seeing a soldier gnawing a piece
of bread, he asked for a part, and ate it with relish.
Upon the return-ride to the Temple, he counted the number of streets.
It was the King’s sister, Elizabeth—a veritable angel,—who foresaw
what was to happen.
“Was the Queen mentioned in the indictment?” she asked.
“No,” replied the King.
“Thank heaven!” said the good Princess; “for if the Queen were taken,
who, then, should look after these children?”
These very words foretell what the Princess foresaw—that if the
Queen’s blood was demanded, her own would follow.